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I will Come Back

A Film Directed By Jean Barat

On May 13, 1941, the French police arrests Zysman Wenig of Polish origin in Paris for being a Jew. He is 28 years old. He is interned in the Pithiviers camp located 60 miles south of Paris. On June 25, 1942 he is deported to Auschwitz in Poland by the rail transport convoy N°4.
70 years later, he tells us how he managed to survive to a 4 year internment, comprising 3 years in Nazis concentration and extermination camps (Pithiviers, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Ebensee).

This documentary film, when tracing back a surviving deportee's course, is a film which sticks to one's survival circumstances and to a 100-year-old man's gaze who looks back to his fate and his family's leads to live one of the greatest humanity's tragedy.

A film directed by Jean Barat – written by Jean Barat.
With the participation of Annette Wieviorka and Fabrice Humbert.
Narrative's voice Geoffrey Bateman. Music by Jean-Noël Iven.
Produced by JW Production – Jacques Wenig & Injam Production – Marc Andréani 2015.
With the participation of the National Centre for Cinema (CNC) and the support of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation in Paris.

DVD BOX AVAILABLE ON LINE AT

Teaser - I Will Come Back

On June 25, 1942 after being deported for 407 days in the Pithiviers camp, Zysman Wenig and 998 of his misfortune companions are deported to Auschwitz by the railway transport convoy #4.

PRESS BOOK

Critic opinions in major French newspapers and magazines

His story is describing the camps real life.
(Le Monde)

A staggering narrative which is painfully asking the question of the « life after ».
(Le Figaro)

An exceptional testimony.
(Le Pèlerin)

On an understated moving tone… Zysman Wenig modestly tells his years of survival in the Nazis death camps universe.
(Télérama)

His extraordinary ability to adapt himself and his survival instinct compel admiration. A documentary film of exemplar discreetness.
(Télé-Obs).

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

Inside the box

Zysman Wenig

Zysman Wenig was born on January 15, 1913 in the small town of Konskie, near Lodz, in Poland. The youngest of seven children, he was only five when his mother died prematurely.
At eight, he began working alongside his father, repairing shoes. He had only two years of formal education.
At sixteen, Zysman decided to leave Poland, with its anti-Semitism and poverty, to seek a better life elsewhere.
He planned to join his older sister, who had moved to Paris with her family in the 1920s.
Visa in hand, he arrived at the Gare du Nord train station in Paris in July 1931, aged just seventeen.
His sister Sarah was married to Moshe Grundman, also a Polish-born Jew.
Sarah and Moshe had five children. Zysman, not much older than their firstborn son, Hermann, joined the family in their small, two-room apartment on rue du Temple in the Marais area.
Zysman met the rest of the Grundman family: brothers and sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews. Golda and Aron Schipke and their son Hermann, Pinkus and his wife Klara, Elie and Malka and so many others. The close-knit family gathered at every opportunity. At these gatherings, one person in particular caught Zysman's eye — the beautiful Khayè, Moshe's younger sister.
On June 30, 1936, Zysman and Khayè were married in a civil ceremony in Paris.
On November 22 of the same year, Jacques, their first child, was born. On April 9, 1940 came a second son.
On May 14, 1941, when part of France was occupied, Zysman Wenig was arrested by the French police in the first mass roundup targeting men aged 18 to 60, the so-called "green ticket roundup” — referring to the color of the paper on which the summons was printed — was the first mass roundup in France. He was interned in the Pithiviers camp together with 1,700 men, who likewise him, were Jews of foreign origin.
On June 25, 1942 after being interned 407 days in Pithiviers, Zysman Wenig and 998 of his misfortune companions were deported to Auschwitz by the train transport convoy #4.
In the Auschwitz camp, the Stammlager (main camp), he will survive for 937 days.
On January 18, 1945, with Soviet troops just a few dozen kilometers from Auschwitz, the camp was evacuated. Together with his fellow prisoners, Zysman marched 65 kilometers to the small town of Wodzislaw Śląski, near the border with Czechoslovakia in what has been named as one of the “death march”. In this town's railway station a train is awaiting them, another ordeal. The convoy consists of flat cars the kind usually used to transport coal. In temperatures that fell to minus 30 Celsius, Zysman was crammed into the open cars with the other prisoners who survived that march. The train traveled south through Czechoslovakia for 12 hours and 500 kilometers, to Austria.
On January 25, 1945 they arrived at the Mauthausen train station. Many did not survive the cold. After a four day quarantine, Zysman is transferred to a subcamp camp, 100 kilometers West of Mauthausen, in Ebensee in the Austrian Tyrol.
On May 6, 1945, the Ebensee camp is liberated by the American troups who rescued the survivors: 16,469 men 6,000 almost dying. Zysman weighted just 37 kilograms. He had stayed 98 days in Ebensee.
On, May 24, 1945 he arrived at Paris Gare du Nord train station. He is 32 years old. It took him more than 4 years to be reunited with his wife, children, who by miracle escaped deportation.

THE DVD BOX

DVD 1 CONTENT

I WILL COME BACK

On May 13, 1941, the French police arrests Zysman Wenig, of Polish origin, in Paris for being a Jew. He is 28 years old. He is interned in the Pithiviers camp located 60 miles south of Paris. On June 25, 1942 he is deported to Auschwitz in Poland by the rail transport convoy N°4.
70 years later, he tells us how he managed to survive to a 4 year internment, comprising 3 years in Nazis concentration and extermination camps (Pithiviers, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Ebensee).

This documentary film, when tracing back a surviving deportee's course, is a film which sticks to one's survival circumstances and to a 100-year-old man's gaze who looks back to his fate and his family's leads to live one of the greatest humanity's tragedy.

A film directed by Jean Barat – written by Jean Barat.
With the participation of Annette Wieviorka and Fabrice Humbert.
Narrative's voice Geoffrey Bateman. Music by Jean-Noël Iven.
Produced by J.W. Production – Jacques Wenig & Injam Production – Marc Andréani 2015.
With the participation of the National Centre for Cinema (CNC) and the support of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation in Paris.

DVD 2 CONTENT

WOUNDS

The 3 chapters which follow the film, I Will Come Back, are intended to better understand the impact of this tragedy on Zysman Wenig's family from 1941 till nowadays.

- The Hidden Childhood - (24 minutes)
Jacques and Roger Wenig's testimonies, Zysman's sons, both hidden children during the war.
- The Journey – (33 minutes)
Zysman Wenig returns back to his land of origin and to the Auschwitz camp.
- The Heirs
Michel and Milena Wenig's testimonies, Zysman Wenig's son and grand-daughter

Written and directed by Jean Barat, archive images by Milena Wenig and Christophe Michelet
Produced by JW production – Jacques Wenig – 2016

TEASER - Blessures/Wounds (English subtitle)

Out of the Grundman-Wenig family 12 members arrested and deported, Zysman Wenig is the only one who made it back. The oldest, Aron Schipke, was 54 years old, the youngest, Rosette Grundman, was 4 years old.

EVENTS

The film I Will Come Back has been aired by two French TV networks: The Parliament TV Channel (LCP) and RMC Discovery in 2015 and 2016.

Both films have been publicly displayed at:
The Holocaust Memorial in Paris
The Dunjon Theater in Pithiviers
The CERCIL Memorial in Orleans
The Political Institute of Paris (SciencesPo)

A public reading of the letters written by Zysman to Khayè has been performed on May 14, 2016 at the Dunjon Theater in Pithiviers for the 75th « Green Ticket Roundup » anniversary.

The Letters To Khayè

Zysman Wenig, Khayè WenigPrefaced by Annette Wieviorka

« My beloved sweetheart, I asked you not to expect me any minute. I will come home one day! Don't watch the door. I'll come home when you least expect it. »

Since he was interned in the Pithiviers camp, in May 1941, Zysman writes every day to his wife, Khayè. Some censored letters in French and many others in Yiddish, their mother language, smuggled out the camp off the authorities' notice.

These dense handwritten letters voice his absolute love for Khayè, his « dearest bright soul », but also tell their intimacy, their fears, rebellion and the daily harsh life… Zysman, unware of his coming fate, is not kidding himself who has the feeling a number of times all the horror and breadth of the Nazi's extermination plan. However, endlessly, he tries to send his wife his formidable desire of life, his fortitude.

Overwhelmed by life and love, this unpublished correspondence features a couple's portrait shaken up by the history and man's madness for, in the end, give us a magnificent lesson of hope and courage.